Mainstream news sites had some fun a couple of months back when Oxford removed “cassette player” from its Concise English Dictionary to make room for “mankini” and “jeggings”, using the occasion to find some resident music guru to point out that, oh-ho, Of Montreal released a cassette recently and that the format is making a sort of comeback as the “newer”, hipper, lo-fi version of vinyl. The HuffPos and CNNs of the world, of course, failed to mention one genre where cassette culture has been alive and well for some time: underground black metal. Unbelievable, right?

While you’d be hard-pressed to insert yourself into a black metal tape-trading circle in 2011, you’ll find, with a bit of searching, a healthy and active cassette consuming community online buying from small, DIY labels like Crepusculo Negro, Rhinocervs, and Colloquial Sound Recordings, to name a few. A lot of exciting bands are choosing to release their albums exclusively on cassette (Black Twilight Circle bands may ring a bell for more than a few people), often in hand-numbered limited editions of 100, 200, or 300. The cassette, with its raw, distant, and lo-fi sound, often seems like the ideal format for black metal. More bands are going the cassette route, and the format seems to be experiencing a renaissance; so many great tapes came out this past year that I’m kicking myself for leaving some favorites off my list.

Most, if not all (depending on how you define increasingly blurring genre lines), of the cassettes on my Best of 2011 list are of the raw black metal/crust punk variety, the areas of metal where I think the most exciting and innovative work on cassette is being done. I chose to avoid going into noise cassettes, even though there were a lot of great noise tapes this year. A few labels and bands make repeats on my list, and, again, I find that not to be due to a lack of awesome cassettes released in 2011, but rather a testament to the quality of a few extraordinarily dedicated and talented musicians out there who have kept the format strong.

Note: RH-11 would probably have been high on this list from what I’ve heard so far, but given that my copy hasn’t showed up yet; looks like it’ll be competing for the 2012 list.

— Wyatt Marshall

. . .

10. Monarque – La Mort (Les Productions Hérétiques)

Monarque plays straight forward, no frills black metal. And they do it really well. Part of the burgeoning Quebec black metal scene, Monarque’s oversized cassette (big box) came with a pre-written form letter, in French, in which, by filling in your name and mailing it to one of the addresses of Archdioceses in Quebec listed at the bottom, you can renounce your baptism from the Catholic Church.

9. Aksumite – The Gleam of Wetted Lips (Colloquial Sound Recordings)

Aksumite plays insane and violent crust punk and occasionally features two singers (maybe it’s one guy, two tracks?) who competitively scream over one another. It’s raucous and chaotic. One song ends with what sounds like someone taking a crap.

8. Forteresse – Une Nuit Pour la Patrie (Spectre Sinistre)

Une Nuit Pour la Patrie is a four-song recording of a practice session by Forteresse, an integral part of the burgeoning Quebec black metal scene, in preparation for their first ever tour this past spring. The songs are atmospheric yet pack a punch and are examples of how incredible classic black metal, done well, can be. The demo liner says it was recorded “drunk on alcohol, darkness, and hate”.

A Pregnant Light’s hardcore influenced melodic death/black metal is just . . . righteous. It oozes energy and the raw, pained screams of the singer (unidentified) is some of the more entertaining and satisfying singing I’ve come across this year.

6. Raspberry Bulbs – Nature Tries Again (R.B. Records/Seed Stock)

Raspberry Bulbs’ infectious crust punk is, in all its abrasive hatred, one thing above all: fun. Most songs are around two minutes long and flow nearly seamlessly from one to the next, making Nature Tries Again the kind of album that is best listened to in its entirety.

5. Tukaaria – Raw to the Rapine (Rhinocervs)

Tukaaria’s Raw to the Rapine is relentless and chaotic melodic black metal that often seems on the verge of spiraling out of control, with ominous clean vocals thrown into songs that are otherwise violent and menacing. Raw to the Rapine, their first full-length release, cemented Tukaaria as a band to watch. Raw to the Rapine will be released on Profound Lore in 2012.

4. Ash Borer – Discography (Psychic Violence)

A comprehensive double cassette release of Ash Borer’s material from 2009 to 2011, Ash Borer’s sprawling experimental black metal soundscapes regularly top the 10-minute mark, if not nearing a full 20 minutes. They manage the song lengths well, moving from sweeping riff to sweeping riff in a way that is more hypnotic than tiring.

3. Odz Manouk/Tukaaria (Rhinocervs)

Odz Manouk, whose debut cassette would be on this list were it not released last year, supplies this split with two heavy, demonic, and melodic compositions interspersed with distant howling. Tukaaria’s three songs are incredible as well. Both Odz Manouk and Tukaaria will see CD releases on Profound Lore next year.

2. The Haunting Presence – The Haunting Presence (Crepusculo Negro)

Brutal, raw, ripping death/black metal that doesn’t let up, The Haunting Presence’s four-song cassette was a must this year, putting vigor, evil, and muscle into death metal in a way I haven’t heard it in some time. Hell’s Headbangers will release a 7-inch in the coming months, to be followed by an mLP in 2012.

1. Odour of Dust and Rot (Rhinocervs)

Odour of Dust and Rot was arguably the release of the year for me, a compilation featuring contributions from Crepusculo Negro and Rhinocervs bands Absum, Glossolalia, Odz Manouk, Kuxan Suum, Nihilobstat, Tukaaria, and untitled projects. Absolutely killer from start to finish, the whole album is cloaked in obscurity. A highpoint of note would be Absum’s funereal, mournful, epic and distant dirges.

46 Comments

I loved cassettes back in the day. A Walkman could run forever on a pair of AA batteries, and everything about it was more reliable than a CD-man (or whatever they called it). Still, I’m not sure why they need to continue to exist. I used to have two huge zip-up cassette cases in my Ranger, and switching tapes out was something best done before you left or after you got there. My iPod has way more music on it, and it’s more convenient in every way–and it sounds better than cassettes. Nostalgia is the only reason I can see.

FMA- sometimes there are more important considerations than convenience or fidelity.

Love cassettes! When you listen to an album on cassette for the first time, listening to the same music on any other format feels ‘wrong.’ The medium becomes part of the message- never so with mp3s or cds

Thanks for the list! This is awesome.

Quick suggestion: how about a list of the top ten EP’s, splits, and short releases this year?

The ressurgence of using tapes is quite strange I think, you would think that it’d be a nostalgia thing but alot of younger bands do it too. I think that there might be abit of ‘kvlt points’ thing in doing this, hah.

The Black Crest of Death, The Gold Wreath of War by Departure Chandelier should be on this! Fantastic stuff. Also, White Medal (along with other Legion Blotan releases). Strongblood! Good list, none the less.

I never managed to get my hands on a copy of Departure Chandelier, but I’ve heard great things.

As for Legion Blotan, I think they are putting out some of the best BM tapes out there. I agree, White Medal is great. In the end, the Legion Blotan stuff just got edged out by the tapes that ended up on this list. Actually, I only recently picked up physical copies of most of the Legion Blotan bands when Fallen Empire started carrying them in the States. They have a new batch coming out next month, and I’m sure there will be some major winners in the update.

A few others came out a bit too late for my list — I really am enjoying the Ephemer and Ziel Bevrijd cassettes on Les Productions Heretiques. So much good stuff out there!

Tactility is one. Also the aesthetics of the actual tape format, the design choices in the packaging and typesetting, the artwork.

The music collection itself is a consideration, as a physical entity. Tapes are really interesting as design objects on a shelf, lined up next to each other. Not very often someone comes over, jumps on my itunes playlist and starts up an interesting and fruitful conversation, but it happens all the time with my vinyl and tape collections.

The linear quality of tapes is interesting too. Recording 30 minutes of music knowing that the listener can’t easily skip from idea to idea should change your composition habits, if you are creatively minded. If you start skipping around on an ash borer rip, you skip right past all the music!

One can argue that a limited bandwidth (re: fidelity) can also make a sound a lot more interesting. That’s why filters are so important to subtractive synthesis, for example. cutting off certain highs or lows can change the entire tone and character of the sound, more of an aesthetic consideration than simply “closer to ‘real’ sounding is better.”

Nostalgia has something to do with it, too, for plenty of people, but what’s wrong with that? It’s just another factor in a person’s enjoyment of whatever item in question, no more or less important that any other. If I choose to watch beavis and butthead on VHS because that’s the way I remember it best, how is my experience any worse or less than some kid watching on digital? It’s not.

I think there’s something to be said, too, for the human connection required by cassettes. MP3’s are convenient as hell (my format of choice) but their provenance is often so vague as to be unrecognizable. (This is taken to a extreme in the case of BitTorrent, wherein files are downloaded in microscopic pieces from a swarm, rather than song-by-song from a single source, thus making the distributor a literal nonentity.)

In making record stores obsolete, MP3’s shone a light on the inherent flaws of CD’s, which were traditionally overpriced, sterile, aesthetically unpleasant and too often (again) distributed through a faceless third party (Amazon, Best Buy, etc.). Vinyl, on the other hand, is expensive and inconvenient — not every band can afford to press it, and not every listener can make space for (or afford) the necessary rig. (By comparison, every shitty car has a cassette deck; you can buy an old box radio for $3 at Goodwill.)

Cassettes as they are distributed in this case are essentially human: You write to the band, ask them to send you a copy of their cassette; they package it up, write your name and address on the envelope with a Sharpie, and send it to you, with their return address on the corner of the mailer. Maybe the cassette is hand-numbered; maybe they throw in a sticker or a note. By the time it arrives, that package has been handled and cared for by the artist; then it is in your hands, being torn open with some degree of curiosity and excitement: it satisfies four senses (assuming you don’t put the thing in your mouth…which you can do, too, if you so choose). That communication and connection, combined with the tactility of the medium, can be very exciting and maybe even unusual, considering the way most music is distributed and experienced today.

I see the conversation-starter point, but everything else can be dismissed, at least to an extent.

Many tape decks (at least later tape decks in cars) could detect breaks between tracks, so you could skip them. Conversely, you can put a whole album in one MP3 file or CD track to make it that much more difficult to skip through (unless you go to the trouble of splitting the file into parts, as I sometimes do with, say Corrupted songs). And why, as an artist, force the listener to enjoy it the way YOU want them to enjoy it?

Limited fidelity can be imbued into the master copy before recording it onto the medium that’s sold.

I guess I can still see the choice in some circumstances, but at this point it seems just on the side of “gimmick” rather than “legitimate artistic decision”.

It’s totally subjective, of course, and subject to the individual’s personal cost-benefit analyses. I personally think cassettes (as they are discussed here) are cool as hell but I don’t have the money, apartment space, inclination or time to start a collection right now. It’s easy for me to make this choice, though: Because most serious file-sharing networks are so comprehensive, I rarely find myself not hearing music because it was released only on cassette. That said, I completely recognize the appeal.

wc

Posted December 28, 2011 at 1:04 PM

cool replies. I disagree here, concur there, and mostly just really appreciate the fuck out of even having this conversation!

I usually listen to music on my iPod solely cause it’s so easy to have on my person at all times- but if I can sit down and put a physical copy of a release on and listen to it like that, it’s considerably more enjoyable for me. I need to find a cassette player solely for the Ash Borer release.

A lot of exciting bands are choosing to release their albums exclusively on cassette (Black Twilight Circle bands may ring a bell for more than a few people), often in hand-numbered limited editions of 100, 200, or 300

As far as I am personally concerned, that means I’m just going to wait for someone to rip it, and download it for free.

(Basically, I’m with FMA on this – cassette? Fine, be kvlt if you want – I’ll buy it on another medium if I like it.

Cassette only limited edition? Yeah, that’s funny.)

I will be damned if I buy a cassette tape in 2011. I’ll happily pay for a CD, or a legit download.

But you try this “limited edition cassette” crap and you lose any chance at my money.

I remember when cassettes were a real market force. And they sucked, which is why they’re dead. They suck even worse than vinyl, which sucked in practical terms.

I bought the Oskoreien tape this year, and it came with a free download code. What’s your opinion on that?

On topic, kinda – I used the tape as the basis for a short, informal presentation for my master’s course. I discussed it in relation to Bill Brown’s Thing Theory essay – specifically, his thoughts on the Typewriter Eraser sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and its status as a fetishised and surreal artistic version of a once commonplace object. I mean, I used to make mixtapes for my friends – I’m sure many here did. But no-one (apart from hipsters ;)) does that any more; a Spotify playlist achieves the same end without the hassle of pressing ‘record’, ‘stop’, ‘record’ over and over. What use is a tape to me? I don’t even have anything to play one on. Yet I still coughed up some cash for a lump of purple plastic.

So: a band in 2011 releasing an album on tape is definitely making a statement of some kind. What kind of statement, exactly, they’re making is another question. There’s definitely a sort of nostalgic fetishisation of the past going on, though, especially for these young whippersnapper bands who weren’t even born when the tape trading scene was at its height.

I think that part of the reason that bands do this is to NOT make money. Some people just want to release their art, and releasing it on CS only ensures that people such as yourself will not buy it. People who are actually interested and invested in this stuff will.

I was really honored to have two cassettes I’ve released this year show up on this list. If you check out our webstore, you’ll see that when you purchase a cassette, you also receive a download link sent to your email. Cassette is my preferred medium for a number of reasons, but ultimately I want you, the listener to be able to enjoy the music on your terms. I’m sure when Spielberg made Jurassic Park he wanted the viewer to see it in a theater with the big screen and cool sound system, but I don’t think he discouraged DVD or video sales.

I feel sort of the same. The cassette is a very cool medium to present the music on, but I don’t feel like you should have to be held to that if you don’t want to be. CSR is not trying to be “kvlt” or anything like that. Personally, as someone who came of age in the 90s, it is a nostalgic thing to some extent, and I remember them being thrown out en masse for CDs.

Anyway – don’t lump us in with the “tr00″ crowd. We’re doing what we want to do. And for the record, I’m interested in doing CDs at some point. Right now, it isn’t financially possible. I believe in this music and I want to share it which is why I started the label. And none of the bands on the label have an agenda other than creating good, honest art.

For now, the cassette is a cool medium to present this music in, but I wouldn’t say it is the only medium. A CD, LP, or Live concert would also be interesting takes on this music. We are opposed to none of those options.

while i personally dislike cassettes quite a bit, i think it’s completely reasonable to approach them as either an economic choice, an aesthetic stance, a political/cultural statement, physical art object or some combination thereof.

I’ve seen bands sell cassettes with drop cards so you can download the digital version and also have the cassette (similar to the vinyl drop card idea). I think for small bands/labels, it’s probably the cheapest way to produce something physical with music on it and get it out there (vinyl is expensive/CD’s don’t sell as well). You can print them in small runs whereas CD’s and vinyl they usually make you print a minimum of 300.

I grew up listening to Shout at the Devil, Kill ‘em All, Piece of Mind, et al, on vinyl and then on to tape-trading with other Metalheads in the States so I admit to a fair share of nostalgia re analog recordings. Nowadays, most of the interesting stuff in Metal comes out in tape and I listen to it at work with an old boom box by my desk … my perosnal favorites include: Med Dod For Oje by Ligfaerd (Danish band on Silver Key Records (basically anything from this label is excellent)) and Downfall Proclamator by Doomslaughter (from Belarus and on Iron Bonehead, another analog-only label this ime from Germany) … cheers and good listening!

Pick up the 2011 demo of Detroit blackened thrash band Perversion. It sounds like a feral cat from a favela in Sao Paolo was trapped in a plane bound for Detroit. I saw them a couple of months ago. They also share members with the ultra gnarly Shitfucker. Really savage and wild!

Tapes last way longer than CD’s, hard drives and Iplods. I still have many of mine from 20+ years ago. Not counting the beer, taco sauce, dirt and whatever else they’ve had on em over the years. And I can fix them to a point. Can’t do that with other media, and don’t forget vinyl, properly cared for, lasts longer then your measly time on this earth.

I love Volahn and all, but isn’t it funny when the Bone Awl/Ashdautas split tape came out, the first pressing sold out in a matter of minutes then the second pressing magically went on sale about an hour later?

Previous commenters have mentioned that cassettes were cheap to make and more convenient to make in small batches than CDs. That surprises me because i figured that cassettes being obsolete for more than 10 years now would have made them expensive to produce, because that’d imply reusing parts and manufacturing processes not easily available nowadays. I guess the knowhow wasn’t lost at all.

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